


Quiet War

by icarus_chained



Category: Highlander: The Series
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Violence, Watchers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-03
Updated: 2012-05-03
Packaged: 2017-11-04 19:02:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/397156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icarus_chained/pseuds/icarus_chained
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Another prompt ficlet. If Horton's ideals had gained more ground, and Duncan had been one of the first casualties of the war with the Watchers ... what would Methos have done?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Quiet War

Neither Joe nor Duncan had realised it. Adam Pierson had been harmless, after all. That incarnation of Methos, even at the worst, even at the best, had always had something harmless about him, something cowardly and slinking and dependable. They never realised (though Joe had come close) the full implications of where they'd found him, the full implications of an immortal so familiar with the Watchers that he could infiltrate them with ease. They hadn't realised. Had watched, but hadn't seen. No-one had.

No-one would, now. No-one would have a chance. 

His war was quiet. His wars always were. Riding in, sword drawn, had been Kronos' schtick. Methos planned. Methos manipulated. Methos had watched empires rise and fall, and quietly helped many a one along its way. He didn't need armies. He didn't need swords.

He just needed the right information. Just needed to know who was going to be where, who was watching who, who might like to know they were being watched. Who might like to know that the eyes on their backs were the same as those who had watched Duncan Macleod fall. The same as those who had ordered it done. The same as those who'd killed him, who'd been a hero to so many. All Methos needed was a word in the right ears, and the database he himself had created and slipped inside the Watcher's guard.

And softly, silently, one by one, the Watchers started to fall. To immortals, first. To the ones they watched. And then, slowly, insidiously, to each other. As they started to turn on themselves, tearing themselves apart in search of the traitor, in search of the hands at the keys that set their charges against them. In search of him.

But Methos was good at not being found. Oh, he was so good at that.

Inside a decade, it was over. Inside a decade, he brought them to their knees. For himself, perhaps. For the safety of immortals everywhere, when Watchers were turning wholesale to Horton's viewpoint. To prevent discovery, to prevent war. All of that, perhaps. In ten years, he'd driven one of the world's oldest organisations to its knees, and maybe those would be the reasons why, one day.

But today he stood over his student's grave, over the grave of Duncan Macleod, over the man whose quickening had almost held Methos' own, and who no-one now would ever hold again. Today, Methos looked down at another fallen student, another boy he'd loved, and nursed the quiet truth.

They had taken what he loved from him. And in five thousand years, through the rise and fall of empires and the billions of deaths of men ... no-one yet had ever survived doing that. One way or another. No brother, lover, emperor or slave, had ever survived taking what was his.

"I'll build them again," he whispered, for Joe's sake, for Duncan's. "The Watchers. I'll make them better this time." He'd done it before. Make them and break them. He'd done it before. 

And one day, perhaps ... he'd do it again.


End file.
